Columns & Articles

A collection of columns published by Democracy Now! co-hosts Amy Goodman and Juan González along with articles published by Democracy Now! producers and correspondents.

Amy Goodman’s nationally syndicated weekly newspaper column is distributed by King Features. If you’d like to see the column in your paper, call, write a letter, or send an email to the Op-Ed or editorial page editor of your local newspaper and direct her to King Features for more information.

A stunning indictment has been handed down in Cincinnati, focusing attention again on police killings of people of color. This is a start for accountability and justice. Cleveland should pay attention. As the thousand people gathered there last weekend said clearly, “Black Lives Matter.”

By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan
On July 20, history was made in Washington, D.C., and in Havana, Cuba. As the Cuban national anthem was played, the island nation’s flag was raised over its embassy in Washington, D.C.

This month, the APA released a stunning independent report that confirms what whistleblowers and dissident psychologists have maintained for close to a decade, that the APA actively colluded with the U.S. Department of Defense and the CIA, manipulating the APA’s policies, meetings and members in order to get the APA’s endorsement of the Pentagon’s torture program.

The ability of regular people to access encryption tools has prompted the governments of both the United States and the United Kingdom to propose special access to all communications. They want a master key to everyone’s digital life.

By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan
The massacre of nine African-American worshippers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., has sent shock waves through the nation and could well blow the roof off the Confederacy.

By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan
As fossil-fuel corporations intensify their exploitation of the world’s oil, protesters, as well as the pope, are weighing in as never before about the catastrophic effects of climate change.

Twelve days after his 22nd birthday, Kalief Browder wrapped an air-conditioner power cord around his neck and hanged himself. At the age of 16, he was arrested after being accused of stealing a backpack. He would spend three years in New York City’s Rikers Island prison, more than two of those years in solitary confinement.

By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan
Evan Young was the valedictorian of this year’s graduating class at Twin Peaks Charter Academy High School, in Longmont, Colorado, and planned to give the valedictory address. But his principal never gave him the chance because Evan planned to come out as gay in the speech for the first time. Evan eventually got to give his speech — two weeks later, not far from where Matthew Shepard, a young gay man, was beaten and tortured in 1998.

Tucked away on a side street in one of London’s toniest neighborhoods, just across the street from the sprawling department store Harrods, sits a brick, Victorian-era apartment building that houses the Ecuadorean Embassy. Julian Assange, the founder and editor of the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks, walked into this embassy on June 19, 2012, and hasn’t stepped foot outside since. Nevertheless, WikiLeaks continues, releasing groundbreaking information about potentially catastrophic conditions in Britain’s nuclear-weapons submarines, full chapters of the secret and intensely controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership trade treaty, and more.

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
There is a vast military complex deep in the hills of eastern Tennessee called “Y-12.” This is where all of the highly enriched uranium is produced and stored for the production of the U.S. nuclear-warhead arsenal. It was there, in the pre-dawn hours of July 28, 2012, that three “Plowshares” peace activists, including an 82-year-old nun, penetrated the facility’s myriad security systems. They spray-painted messages of peace on the wall, poured blood, hammered on the concrete and were arrested.

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
“Pacifica Station Bombed Off Air,” read the Houston Chronicle’s banner headline on May 13, 1970. KPFT, Houston’s fledgling community radio station, had been on the air for just two months when its transmitter was blown to smithereens.

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
“What do you hope to accomplish with this protest,” I asked a 13-year-old girl marching in Staten Island, N.Y., last August, protesting the police killing of Eric Garner. “To live until I’m 18,” the young teen, named Aniya, replied. Could that possibly be the American dream today?

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds” reads the unofficial motto of the United States Postal Service. We now can add to that “nor a national security no-fly zone,” as demonstrated by mailman Doug Hughes.

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
For the first time in more than half a century, the presidents of the United States and Cuba have had a formal meeting. This historic moment occurs with some sadness, however: Eduardo Galeano, the great Uruguayan writer who did so much to explain the deeply unequal relations between Latin America and the U.S. and Europe, died as the summit ended.

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan — A jury in Boston has returned a guilty verdict on all 30 counts against the Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Now the jury must deliberate on the punishment, which could be either life in prison or death. Capital punishment is outlawed in Massachusetts, but Tsarnaev was tried in federal court, where the death penalty is allowed. The case provides a new reason to take a hard look at capital punishment, and why this irreversible, highly problematic practice should be banned.

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
Indiana certainly doesn’t want to be remembered for being a bastion of hatred. So why did Indiana Gov. Mike Pence legalize a new wave of intolerance by signing into law Indiana’s controversial “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” (RFRA)?

Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan — What price would you pay not to kill another human being? At what point would you commit the offenses allegedly perpetrated by Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was charged Wednesday with desertion and “misbehavior before an enemy?”

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan–President Obama and the Republicans in Congress are united on so-called free-trade agreements, which would increase corporate power and reduce the power of people to govern themselves democratically. This has put the president at loggerheads with his strongest congressional allies who oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership, one of the most far-reaching trade agreements in history.

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